15 Years of Life
by Havah Kinny
Summary: JONAS AU not agents. Kevin looks back on the 15 years that he has known Nick and thinks about all of the trials that they faced together. Kevick.


I remember when Nick was born. They told me that I had another baby brother, and at first, I was upset. I wanted a girl who I could torment, whose pigtails I could pull on. I cross my arms over my chest and refused to see him, but the second they brought him over to me I was infatuated. He wasn't crying or sleeping, he was just staring up at me with huge, brown eyes. They let me hold him and from the second I held him in my arms I knew that I never wanted to give him back.

_"Come on Kevin, give Nick back to mommy…"_

_"NO! He's MINE!" _

I was possessive with Nick the way I was with my toys. I would stand over his crib for hours and watch him gurgle, laugh, pull at my clothes and try to talk. He was an adorable baby and I loved him a lot. I played with him all of the time and I would hold him, I even had mom show me how to change his diapers and I didn't mind doing it…until he started to talk and the first word he spoke was Joe. I was so mad, so jealous that it hadn't been Kevin. Joe hardly spent any time with the baby and still his first word was Joe. That was the first time that I remember being mad at little Nick. I stayed away from him for almost two weeks. Mom said that baby Nick cried more in those two weeks than he had in the entirety of his infancy.

_"Kevin, just go play with him, I know that he misses you."_

_"Make Joe go play with him, it's obvious he likes Joe better…" I folded my arms across my chest and turned away from my mom. _

_"Kev, sweetie, he's crying after you." Mom put her hand on my shoulder. "Go play with him or no dessert after dinner."_

_"FINE!" I stalked off to the nursery and stood over Nick's crib, staring angrily at him. The kid instantly stopped crying and let out a shriek of delight. He held his arms out and smiled. _

_"I wuv woo Kevin." _

_"Oh, Kevin sweetie, Nick's first sentence!" Mom gushed from the doorway. _

That's right, Nick's first sentence had been a version of 'I love you, Kevin.' I couldn't keep hating the kid after that. I smiled and reached in the crib to pick him up. After that we were pretty much inseparable again. I practically raised the kid, not because mom and dad didn't want to, but because I wouldn't let them. That's right, I taught him everything, how to read, how to tie his shoes, how to steal food off of Joe's plate when he wasn't looking…everything he needed to know. Also, I listened to him all of the time, when he got up on that table and sang, I would sit there for however long he went and just listen to him belt out showtunes. When Grandma told him to get off of the table, he told her that he couldn't because he had to practice for broadway. I smiled at him and gave him a thumbs up. That night when we went home he sat next to me in the car.

_"Kevin," little Nick whispered in my ear. "I'm gonna be a star one day."_

_"Of course you are Nicky." I smiled and pulled his head on to my shoulder. "And when you are I'll send you flowers every single night."_

_"Promise?"_

_"I promise."_

When Nick was in preschool, Joe and I began to teach him how to wrestle…it was a fun experience. The three of us would roll around and claw at each other. We let Nick bite because he was the youngest and needed some kind of handicap. One day, Joe was out and Nick and I were screwing around, throwing fake punches and tackling each other, and I decided to flip him Jackie Chan style…only I didn't do it right and he ended up falling and breaking his collar bone. I had never seen so many tears in my life. Mom took him away in her car and dad made me go to my room. That night mom came to see me and I was hysterical, couldn't stop crying.

"_Mommy, did I kill Nick?"_

_"No, no sweetie, he just broke his collar bone."_

_"I BROKE HIM?!" I was scared beyond belief. _

_"No…well yeah, maybe just a little bit, but I promise sweetie, he's going to be just fine." Mom cradled me in her arms and sang to me. I couldn't sleep, I was crying too hard. "Kevin, honey, calm down!"_

_"I can't, I didn't want to hurt him! We were just having fun!" Mom proceeded to comfort me and tell me that it was alright, and when Nick came home he was surprisingly calm and forgave me immediately._

I was a good student, perfect actually, because I tended to be a little bit of an over achiever. I never got a B, I never missed a day of class, I never talked back, I never missed an assignment or picked a fight, I never even got in trouble until one day when I was 13. Nick came crying to me at lunch time (we went to the same K-12 school) and pulled me away from my friends.

_"Kevin I want to go home and the teacher said I was gonna be fine, that little mud never hurt anybody but I want to go home!" He looked up at me tearfully. His pant legs were covered in mud and the t-shirt that he was wearing wasn't the one that he had come to school in. _

_"Nick, Nicky what happened?" I pulled him over to a bench in an alcove in the hallway at our school. _

_"Ricky Barnes pushed me in a mud puddle and said that I was a maggot for wanting to be on broadway…he said I gonna be a fairy!"_

_"That bastard!" I was enraged immediately. The only relief was that Nick didn't realize that Ricky hadn't called him a maggot, the real insult had begun with an F and was a lot less friendly. "Ok Nick, you stay here." I got up and Nick looked at me._

_"Where are you going Kev?"_

_"To uh…to talk to Ricky." I ran from the hallway and over to the table where Ricky Barnes, who was two years above Nick and REALLY should have known better, ate lunch. "I hear you were messing with my kid brother?" I pulled Ricky from the chair he sat in by the collar of his perfectly ironed shirt. _

_"Dude…he deserves it! Kids a downright fag!" That did it. I punched Ricky as hard as I could. _

_"Even if he were gay Barnes, it wouldn't matter, ok? So you leave him alone or else."_

_"Or else what?" Rocky taunted, obviously still not getting my message. I just rolled my eyes and punched him again and again until I was pulled off of him. Suspended for three days. My perfect record shot to hell, but I didn't care._

Later that year, Nick's dream came true and he landed a role on broadway. He played a part in Annie, Get Your Gun…and just liked I'd promised I sent him "flowers" every night…although on the budget of a 13 year old it was more like one Gerber daisy every night and a rose for the Sunday matinee. I went to see as many of his shows as mom and dad would let me and I sat through countless performances of Annie Get Your Gun, Beauty and The Beast, Les Miserables, and many other shows, and every time that I went to see Nick backstage he seemed surprised.

_"Kevin, you came!" Nick ran up to hug me, still dressed as a little French rebel…dead and all._

_"Of course I did." I scooped him up and gave him a big hug. He gave me a kiss on the cheek, transferring some of his stage makeup to my face, but I didn't care. I loved that little boy and nothing that he could do would set me off._

When he was 12 he got signed to Colombia records and before long, Joe and I were in on the contract too. Things began to spiral out of our control…but it wasn't just the band. That year my feelings took an unexpected turn. Now when I looked at Nick I saw more than just my curly haired little brother with big, brown eyes, I saw a beautiful, maturing boy who made my heart sing. Without meaning too, I had fallen in love with Nick and I didn't know what to do. I tried to ignore the feelings, but everytime I looked at him my stomach did a flip. On his 13th birthday, I couldn't handle myself anymore, I had to tell him.

_"Nick," I pulled him aside, leading him to the back porch, away from his party guests. "This is going to sound odd, but I'm in love with you, will you go out with me?" I took his hand, but he pulled away._

_"Eww, no, Kevin, that's gross!" Nick looked at me, disgusted, and ran away from me, back to his party._

After that Nick and I rarely spoke, despite the fact that our album and band were getting more and more noticed. Then came the worst part. Nick was rushed to the hospital and diagnosed with Type 1 Diabetes. I was crushed because he wouldn't let me hold his hand when they told him, he didn't even want me in there. Mom and Dad didn't understand why he hated me, but we didn't think that they needed to know. I was the only one who didn't sleep those nights at the hospital, not any of them. I stayed up him with him all night watching over him, as though I could prevent any pain that he was feeling, anything. That 13 year old boy meant everything to me and I hated to see him lying in that bed so frail and ill.

_"Kevin, get some sleep…it's your turn." Mom's hand was on my shoulder._

_"No." I shook my head. "I slept last night." That was a lie, but it didn't hurt to make her believe it._

_"I know, but still, sweetie, you need rest."_

_"NO! Mom, look at him…what if something happens? I don't want to fall asleep and wake up to find that I don't have three little brother's anymore."_

_"Kevin, that's not gonna happen, his condition is in control!"_

_"Something could go wrong, I'm not going to sleep until he's out of here."_

I had kept my promise too. I was the one who checked up on him constantly, much to his annoyance. I was the one who made sure that he always took his shots, and six months later, I was the one who learned about the omnipod. When he got one, he finally began to seem grateful, he even gave me a hug, thanking me. He told me how much he hated those shots and how he was glad to be rid of them. I told him that I still loved him. He walked away again.

Then we began to hit it big. We got a spot on Disney channel and after that things sort of got out of control again…but by that time I pretty much had my feelings in check. I could look at him, lust after him, give him my heart, but as long as I knew that it was just a fantasy, I was safe…until two days before Christmas when the rest of the family was out shopping.

_"Kevin," Nick walked up to me in the hallway and pulled me under the hanging light. "Kevin, I'm sorry about last year when you asked me out…I was younger, stupider, I didn't realize that you harbored all of the love that I could ever want…" _

_"Nick, what are you saying?"_

_"I'm saying that I want to go out with you…if you'll still have me that is." He looked shyly up at me and I grinned, pulling him in to our first kiss. _

_"Of course I'll still have you, I'll always love you Nick."_

That moment was pure bliss. In my arms I held the most beautiful 14 year old boy in the world and he was mine…that's when Joe found out. He came bursting through the door, furiously kissing his boyfriend, Logan Lerman, an actor who was two years his junior…I would have mocked him, but Nick was 5 years younger than me…and my brother. Joe didn't notice at first that Nick and I had been kissing, but that night, after Logan left, he caught us again, downstairs by the tree at midnight. Neither of us cared as long as he'd promised not to tell mom and dad. That Christmas eve was the best of my life. Long after the rest of the family went to bed Nick and I stayed on the couch, a blanket wrapped around us as we stared at the tree.

_"Merry Christmas," I leaned over to him and kissed him softly as the clock struck midnight. _

_"You too." He put his head on my shoulder and let out a long, deep sigh. _

_"Is everything alright?" I asked, looking nervously at him._

_"Yeah…it's just that I want you to know that the gift I got you…it doesn't really reflect my feelings for you…"_

_"Well as long as this does, I'm fine." I pulled him in to another deep kiss and he returned my passion with just as much of his own. _

_"That's genuine." He smiled. _

_"That's all I need."_

_"We should go to bed…" he yawned and I couldn't help but laugh at him._

_"Only if you'll sleep in my bed."_

_"You know I can't…we'll get caught."_

_"We'll set an alarm, you can get out of my bed at 5:00 and go to your own…please? I just want to hold you tonight!"_

That was the first of many nights that I held him in my arms as we slept and god was it amazing. He made the cutest noises when he slept, that couldn't be denied, and there was something about holding his muscular body in my arms that let me know he was the one for me; that no one else anywhere could make me feel the way I did when I held him. We had a great year. He held me, kissed me when no one was looking, we even got to third base after thanksgiving dinner when everyone else was in turkey comatose. He said he loved me, I told him the same…we couldn't have been happier, but with over a year of no fighting we should have known that something big was just around the corner. I really should have seen it coming, that popstar princess…god, this wasn't even her fault…but I made it her fault…I needed someone to blame.

_"Kevin, please!" Nick sobbed, looking up at me. "I didn't mean to kiss her! She kissed me!"_

_"You told me that you wouldn't kiss anyone at midnight, that you'd put us on west coast time and kiss me at 3:00 am and say that that was everything, the new year."_

_"Kevin! SHE kissed ME!"_

_"You didn't have to turn it in to a three minute make out!" I shouted angrily at my brother, my ex-lover. I didn't care how much he begged, what he had done had broken my heart._

_"I'm sorry! I got carried away!"_

_"More like swept away by her feminine wiles. Go fuck her Nicky, I don't care, we're OVER!" I slammed the hotel room door in his face and threw myself in to bed, crying and ignoring Joe's attempts to comfort me._

Here I am, two weeks later sitting on the couch in the apartment that I moved in to after the breakup. I didn't want to be near him anymore because he still had my heart. I sighed as I thought about his curls, his brown eyes, his deceit…but it killed me to think about the love that I had lost most of all. It was exactly one month before Valentines day and I was again, going to spend it all alone. One Valentines day with the person I loved, that was all I'd gotten. One. Did got hate me that much for loving Nick? I thought that he was supposed to love all of his children. I took my purity ring off and threw it at the wall. If God's promise of eternal love to me wasn't going to be kept then neither was my promise of monogamy, chastity. I heard a knock on my door and sighed, expecting mom. She brought me dinner without fail every single night. I opened it, but mom wasn't standing there…in fact, no one was. Nick was on his knees, crying his eyes out with a bunch of lilacs in his hands. Those were my favorites…not roses like the true romantic, but lilacs because they smelled and looked beautiful in their deep purple. Beside him lay a steaming bag containing what I knew must be my dinner. "What are you doing here?" I looked down at Nick.

"Kevin, please…" he whimpered through his tears. "What I did was wrong and I am so, so sorry! All I want is one more chance to prove that I love you more than anyone else in the world. All I want is one more chance to show you how much I care. All I want is one more chance to show you how much I need you, please, Kevin please…" He looked so pitiful on his knees like that, holding those flowers out to me. "And…and if you won't right now, just take the flowers at least, take them and promise me that you'll think about it?" I was frozen, unable to move for almost a minute, just watching him as he cried. "Please, Kevin…at least say something! Just tell me yes…or even reject me, just as long as I know because not knowing is killing me…Kevin I know that you loved me and I don't think that you could have fallen out of the love that we were in so fast…I just want you back…I would give up anything to have you back."

"Nick, you don't have to give up anything," I whispered, taking the flowers from him and setting them gently on the ground. I offered him my hand and pulled him to his feet. "I love you just as much as I did they day that I first told you and every time after that." I took a deep breath. "I'll take you back as long as you promise to be all mine and no one else's."

"I promise Kevin, I promise, I promise, I promise." He pushed me against the wall and kicked the door shut, kissing me passionately. The bag of food lay forgotten on the doorstep. My hands ran up his shirt as he kissed me deeply and before long, both his shirt and mine lay forgotten on the floor. We didn't make it to the bedroom…or even the couch for that matter. We were blinded by love and passion. I could lie here and say that what followed was kinky, raucous, wild make up fucking, but it wasn't. It was slow, gentle, passionate love making…our first time, on my apartment floor, completely fueled by love. For the first time I understood why there were so many teenage pregnancies, so many occurrences of sex without protection…when the passion takes over, we humans are powerless, and I felt that way tonight with Nick.

"Nicky…" I looked at him as he lay in my bed. We had called mom and told him that he would be staying the night and we warmed up the food that she had left, but neither of us were really hungry…not for that at least. "Nicky, I love you…" I pushed some of the curls from his face and kissed his left temple.

"I know Kevin." He snuggled in to me. "I love you too…I'm sorry for what I did to you, I-"

"Shhh." I shut him up by kissing him passionately. "You know what I was doing before you came over?"

"No…" he shook his head.

"I was thinking about you. I mean not just you as you are now, but I was thinking about the day that you were born and how your first sentence was 'I love you Kevin' and how I got suspended for beating up Ricky after he called you a fag and about how I sent you flowers every night you were on broadway and about how I had always loved you and about…I dunno, just everything about you, but mostly it was those big brown eyes." I looked at him and smiled, love in my heart and I hoped in my eyes.

"Oh Kevin…" he whispered. I could see tears welling in his eyes.

"Nicky, you're not gonna cry on me, are you?" I chuckled slightly kissed his eyelids softly.

"No." He shook his head. "It's just…I love you so much, I can't believe that I hurt you."

"Don't dwell on that Nicky, please…" I kissed his cheek softly. "We're together again and it's gonna stay that way for a long, long time. I love you more than anything in this world or any other and I'm never letting you go again." I kissed him passionately, deeply, and I he just held me in his arms for the rest of the night. Neither of us slept, we just lay there, looking in to each others eyes, knowing that at least we'd found true love.


End file.
